The Sunday Brunch: Harrisburg's Real Life Superheroes.

The two men stand beneath a railroad bridge in downtown Harrisburg. The air is thick with car exhaust. Though it's dark and shaded, the heat of an August morning is palpable. Broken glass crunches underfoot. You don't want to know how it smells.

They're scrubbing intently at the graffiti caking every square inch of the cement walls beneath the bridge. It's a lonely battle and the graffiti is a stubborn foe. Still they scrub and slap on layer after layer of white paint, hoping to remove its stain.

One of the figures wears a blue jumpsuit, a hand-painted motorcycle helmet, Kevlar-lined gloves and boots. A cape billows about him. He's in his mid-20s and wearing armor he's fashioned out of lacrosse pads.

The Pennsylvania Keystone is emblazoned in gold and blue in the center of his chest with a large "C" in the middle. At his waist, a utility belt hangs heavy with pepper spray, flashlights, string, cigarette lighters and quarters. There are even handcuffs and a steel baton — though encounters with bad guys are generally frowned upon.

His name is Commonwealth and he is a superhero. Ignore the pair of Coke-bottle thick glasses that poke through the holes in the ski mask that covers his face.

His partner, Armistice, stands a short distance away. He is tall and thin and wears a blue-and-green track suit. A purple cloth is tied, Zorro-style, across the top half of his face. A scraggly beard doesn't hide the youthful lines of his 19-year-old face.

Together, they are The Keystone Crusaders.

The Reporter and The Photographer have come to meet these two men, who will not reveal their full names, and will only say that they live near the Capital City.

When they're not fighting the graffiti, pumping quarters into soon-to-expire parking meters; distributing food and water to the homeless or waging an endless war against an enemy whom Commonwealth calls Dr. Despair, they work in retail because even Clark Kent has a day job.

Their mission, they say, is to restore hope to a city, beset by crushing debt, that has fallen on hard times. They want to venture into its most desperate neighborhoods, where they hope their example will encourage others to take pride in a city they love.

But right now, they have a problem.

"We need to come back with more paint," Armistice tells his mentor.

"I know we need to come back with more paint," Commonwealth says, as a cell phone rings.

Armistice digs into a pocket and hands the phone to Commonwealth.

"It's your wife," he says as Commonwealth excuses himself.

Armistice cracks a wry grin that spreads across the uncovered lower half of his face.

"We don't have superpowers," he says. He waits a beat. "She does. She has the power to call at inopportune moments."

A superhero's work is never done.

The origin story

It begins in the city of Pittsburgh, some months before. Commonwealth is not yet a superhero. He doesn't feel like he's much of anything.

He has lost his job. He has lost his home. He has hit the wall of despair. He has a young family to look after. And they are living in the streets. Frantic and with nowhere to turn, he calls a younger man he has known since the age of 13.

"Of course you can stay with us," the young hero who would become Armistice tells him.

Commonwealth and his family move in with Armistice and his mother, where they live rent- and board-free for several months. In this moment of kindness, where an ordinary woman has become a superhero to him, he begins to understand how lucky he is.

In February, Commonwealth and his family return to Harrisburg. He has a job lined up. But on his way to the interview, he's pulled over in the parking lot because his registration is expired. His prospective employer sees him, crying to the police officer, trying to explain. He decides to give the young man a chance anyway and offers him a job.

Settled in a new apartment, Commonwealth is reading a tabloid. In it, he learns of the exploits of regular people who have put on masks and capes and costumes and ventured into the streets. They call themselves "Real Life Superheroes."

They are scattered across the country. They have websites and Facebook pages. Some merely walk the streets to look after the less fortunate. Others, perhaps braver or crazier, take it upon themselves to confront criminals. Some of them, as you might expect, end up in the hospital for their troubles.

A lifelong comic book fan who grew up reading Spider-Man and the other legendary Marvel comics characters, Commonwealth feels called to join them. Life, he believes, has given him a second chance. And he must show the same kindness to others..

Commonwealth begins designing a costume, taking his cues from the "Power Rangers" shows he loved as a kid.

Code names are considered and cast aside. Among them: Pitboard, a motocross reference that no one will understand. He rejects Dragonheart after spotting it on his wife's hoodie. The Keystone Crusader? Not for one man. But not bad for a group. He knows he needs help. He knows who to call. They'll be known as The Keystone Crusaders.

Fortunately for Commonwealth, Armistice doesn't have too much going on in Pittsburgh and decides to join him.

"He sold it like his life depended on it," Armistice says. "He convinced me to come out here in April. He had the whole thing set up."

Armistice says he turned to history for his name, taking inspiration from the cease fire that ended World War I. An armistice, he explains, is an immediate cessation of hostilities.

"I didn't want a name for a name's sake," he says. "I wanted a name that meant something. I came up with Armistice. He came up with Commonwealth."

Commonwealth nods in agreement.

"I didn't want to be 'Something-Man,' " he says. "This is an idea that we represent."

The heroes emerge

So what would possess two apparently sane men to put on brightly colored costumes to risk ridicule and maybe even a severe butt-kicking as they go about a self-appointed mission to make their city a better place?

Gary Cross, a history professor and pop-culture specialist at Penn State's Erie campus, says that in the old days, people might dress up as saints or other holy figures and mimic their examples. These days, it's superheroes.

"That these fellows are doing personal charity under the guise of, I presume, Marvel Comics, costuming (and not slaying evil-doers) is perhaps an expression of their sense of irony and whimsy," he says. "Let's all be superheroes in this way!"

Veteran comics writer J.M. DeMatteis, who's penned the adventures of Spider-Man among many other characters, says in an email that "it gladdens my heart" that Commonwealth and others like him have taken a "message of hope" from the adventures of masked heroes.

"They're not mirroring the violence in the superhero genre, they're mirroring the selflessness, the altruism, the simple human decency of fictional heroes like Spider-Man and Captain America. And the world could certainly use more of those qualities," he says.

Bob Philbin, a spokesman for Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson, welcomes the two heroes to the city. Though he's never heard of them, he says, "we could use a couple of platoons of them to help clean up our neighborhoods and maintain our parks."

Asked if the pair had ever been flagged by city police, Philbin said he was not aware of it, "and I would have heard about that."

The heroes on patrol

Commonwealth and Armistice, joined by The Reporter and The Photographer, are walking the streets of Harrisburg. It is not yet 11 a.m. on this August morning and the air is choked with humidity. When he's asked whether he's hot under his elaborate costume, Commonwealth just shrugs and says it comes with the territory.

At a bus stop in the center of the city, Commonwealth and Armistice crack open the cooler and distribute some of its contents to a pair of down-on-their-luck men. Commonwealth wishes them well and tells them he loves them.

"When I say I love them, I understand how hard it is, how much despair there is," he says, answering The Reporter's question before it's asked. "We're doing more than fighting hunger. We're fighting despair. We're there for them, just as Armistice was there for me."

As they walk, there's a constant stream of banter, with Commonwealth playing the straight man to his dryly sarcastic sidekick. Armistice jokes that Commonwealth would "carry a refrigerator's worth of stuff" with him if he were allowed.

When Commonwealth is asked how his wife responded to her husband's superheroic aspirations, it's Armistice who fills in the blank with an emphatic, "No! NO! NO! NO!"

When The Reporter suggests that the two of them behave more like a married couple, both break into gales of laughter.

"We may as well be brothers," Armistice says simply.

As they walk, a few passers-by avoid eye contact with the garishly colored pair — who later confess that they went for their cartoony look specifically because they wanted to appear non-threatening.

More often than not, the heroes' are met with a wide grin and their greeting is returned. Cops in passing police cars sometimes run their sirens in salute, they say.

"I was so scared the first time we came out," Commonwealth says. "But now people honk their horns. On our way home once, a woman was coming out of the Capitol and she gave us $20. I told her we couldn't take it. But we turned it around [and bought] soup and donated it to Bethesda Mission [a Harrisburg shelter]."

"I appreciate it. We all appreciate it. It's a great thing. It lets us know that someone cares," says Connie Jennings of Wrightsville, York County, who's spotted the pair at work under the railroad bridge.

For Commonwealth and Armistice, that's about the only thing that matters: That their work is being noticed and might — just might — inspire others to take up the cause, in costume or not.